Monthly Archives: June 2012

The commercial I’m gonna talk about today is just…guys it’s just weird. It’s the Tostitos commercial with the anthropomorphic bag of chips that is telling the tale of why he changed his shape to scoops. Already that’s kinda weird. He’s a bag of chips, not a chip. It’s like asking someone why they changed the shape of their spleen while the asker is eating the askee’s spleen. I admit, I have a problem with most animated, anthropomorphic products. It just doesn’t make sense, does the cheese want me to eat a hunk of himself? Or his family? Maybe it’s a tactic in anthropomorphic food warfare to get people to eat their enemies. Maybe Twinkie the Kid is manipulating the human race into devouring those that would oppose his mighty and glorious rein as the one, true, and divinely chosen snack cake monarch!

The Tostitos bag though, he goes above and beyond the standard level of weird. He’s a little too enthusiastic to get dipped throughout the whole commercial, but nothing exceptionally unnerving. Until the very end, when this happens:

Bag says something about how his (spleen’s) new shape makes him able to handle any dip.

Random party goer: “Even this big ol’ dickp?”

Tostitos bag: “BRING IT! BRING IT!”

And then the bag vibrates in excitement while his mouth hangs open and his eyes are wide and staring far off, like an expression of pure pleasure.

Which leads me to the question: did I just see a bag of corn chips come. Is…is this porn? Can they show this on television? Did I accidentally turn on a very specific fetish skinimaxesque channel? Am I actually looking at the internet and got confused?

It’s weird and gross and uncomfortable, kinda like losing your virginity. So I guess Tostitos just popped our collective snack-food-sex cherries. Well, MOST of us (I’m looking at you, guy who has way too many Chester Cheeta stuffed animals, you sick fuck).

P.S. I have a very good bestie level friend that works for Frito-Lay and so while this commercial is awkward and inappropriate, I encourage each and every one of you to continue to enjoy their fine products. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to enjoy this delicious bag of Cheddar Cheese Sun Chips while I contemplate the sexual politics of intra-snack food copulation and whether the dip is the “top” because it goes on the chip.

Ok, here are the posts I posted on blogger but not here for some reason (probably crack) (you can’t say “crack” on ABC Family, true story).

This one was titled “Of Groundhogs And Ass Kickings” and was posted on February 3, 2012:

Did everyone have a good Groundhog Day yesterday? Did everyone celebrate it by watching the Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day? That was my favorite movie for a few years when I was a kid. Though that was back when pretty much anything Bill Murray did was awesome. Before shit like The Royal Tenenbaums. A first date I went on back in the day wanted to see A Life Aquatic when it was first out, and within 15 minutes I stopped watching the movie and started watching my date laugh while thinking of elaborate escape plans and how this would be our last date. But anything pre-Rushmore that Mr. Murray was in is pure gold. He was also the best part of Zombieland, and the rest of that movie was pretty effin’ good (I apparently say “effin'” now). My brother has the same birthday as Bill Murray. Badassery runs in the Toasty family. Here is a real conversation my brother and I had over text yesterday:

Toastmaster General (my brother): Have you watched Groundhog Day yet?

Me: No, it’s only like 1pm here [we live in different time zones].

TG: Toasty! You know the tradition! You wake up, watch Groundhog Day while eating donuts and juice, and then you can get back to sleepies.

Clearly Groundhog Day is serious business in my family.

Now on to other important news: the Super Bowl. Long time readers can probably guess where I stand. This Sunday feels like the retelling of the best story ever told. At least it better.

Now of course, if the New York Giants win I will be elated to the point of maybe actually hugging someone on purpose and not for the express purpose of getting laid. However, ideally I don’t just want the Giants to win. I want them to destroy the Patriots. I want it to be a legendary blow-out that will be spoken of in hushed, reverent tones until the end of time. I want the final score to be no less than 87 to no more than 0. By the fourth quarter I want our douchebag punter Steve Weatherford playing quarterback (because why the fuck not?) and the Patriots still can’t score a single fucking point. I want the loss to be so humiliating that the wives of every single player, coach, and staff member of the Patriot franchise simultaneously divorces them for the shame of their performance and the entire Patriot brand. I want “had anything to do with the 2012 New England Patriots” to be a new legally recognized reason for marital annulment.

TL;DR: Fuck the Patriots.

Though nobody wants the Patriots to loss more than my dad. When it was down to the Ravens or the Patriots, I admit I was leaning more towards wanting to play the Ravens, to help wash the bitter taste of the Super Bowl we do not speak of. But not my dad:

Me: So if we win the NFC Championship (psssh, if) then we’ll be playing the Ravens or the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Either way it’s a rematch.

Dad: Yeah, I want it to be the Patriots.

Me: Really? I mean, I’m always for beating the Patriots, but we kinda been there done that only four years ago. And the Ravens…well you know.

Dad: Yeah but no. I want to beat those scuzoids [this is seriously my dad’s version of swearing. I have never heard him say anything worse or even this bad about anyone in his whole life].

Me: Well, the Ravens could beat them and then they wouldn’t even make it to the Super Bowl.

Dad: Oh no, I want them to get to the Super Bowl so that they get their hopes up, then it’ll feel even worse when they lose. This maximizes the disappointment and hurt they will feel. Also, I want US to beat them. I want them to know who’s in charge.

Then he used the word “scuzoids” a few hundred more times before we hung up.

See, my dad grew up in New England so he has a long standing hatred of the New England Patriots and their fans. Just like how my brother and I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and hate the Redskins almost as much as we love the Giants. Also the Redskins blow so hard the hookers on 9th should take notes.

I’m going to end with one last real life conversation relating to the upcoming game:

Roommate: You know Belichick was the defensive coordinator for the Giants under Bill Parcells?

Me: Yeah, then he decided to come out from under Parcells’ shadow and coach his own team only to discover he was nowhere near as talented and the only way he could win was by cheating.

Roommate: He has more Super Bowl rings than Parcells.

Me: From.Cheating.

Roommate: …fair enough.

[Side note: I just discovered that if you type “Belichick” into Google, the first auto-suggestion is “Belichick cheating”. Google knows what’s up].

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This one is called “Super Bowl As Disney Movie” and was posted on February 6, 2012:

I know I might be A LITTLE biased, but as I watched the Super Bowl, I kept thinking that Bilechick and Brady looked like the villains in a movie about hard work, good sportsmanship, and spirit, and Eli was the sweet country boy that refused to succumb to bullying douchebags. Bilechick just looked mean and angry every time the camera was on him, and Brady looked like the frat boy douche whose dad paid for him to get into college whereas Eli had to work really hard to qualify for a scholarship and so knows the value of things. The whole movie Brady harasses Eli and his friends, calling them “Bumpkins” and “Welfare kids” maybe there’s even a scene involving chasing Eli in a pick-up truck while beer bottles fall out of the back of the truck. Then the big game comes and Eli’s determination and sticking to his principles pays off and he wins the big game in a close and therefore thrilling victory proving that honesty and integrity mean more than money and good looks.

Also, Eli is a cutey patootey. You can quote me on that.

Anyway, I just finished a three hour drive back from visiting true Blue believers for the big game so I am tired and a little pissed and having to return to normal life. Therefore, I’m gonna keep this short and just say all that really needs to be said:

The New York Football Giants are number one. They all deserve mugs saying that. Or Super Bowl rings. I guess those work too.

Today I’m going to tell you the story of the first (and so far only) time I’ve been on Nitrous in my adult life.

This story has A LOT of back story so be patient, we’ll get there…together (take my breath awaaaaayyyyyy).

I moved to the West Coast about six years ago and pretty much everyone here has extensive experience with drugs. I soon learned words like “bowl” and “wippets” and other totally rad things that only the cool kids get to know about. I didn’t know these things because I like my brain cells and never really did drugs and was all around a total lame-o even when I was a teenager and in my prime “cool” years. The most popular drug everyone still does is (duh) marijuana, but much to my surprise the one that seemed to be the most nostalgic for a lot of people was Nitrous Oxide (I use the scientific term because I’m still hopelessly lame). I was subjected to many speeches about how, “When you’re on it, you like, understand the whole universe, and you want to tell everyone what it, like, all totally means but you can’t speak and then when you CAN speak you’ve forgotten what you were going to say. I can’t describe it, it’s like everythingness maaaaaan.”

To which I reply, “You know, people that have been clinically dead report a similar experience. I think that was just the sensation of your brain being deprived of oxygen.”

“…you just don’t get it. You’re shackled by your senses.”

“Whatever hippie.”

They say the “you just don’t get it because I totally did drugs for spiritual and intellectual purposes and not just to get high” thing about every drug (seriously guys, just own it. I don’t drink because it makes me a better person, I drink because whiskey tastes good and being drunk is (usually) fun)but the way they described being on Nitrous was slightly less terrifying then say acid. I still had no actual desire to do it.

This brings us to back story Volume II, I hate dentists. I.fucking.hate.dentists. “Fantasies of running them down with my car” level of hate. I am a rabid anti-dentite and not ashamed and have no desire to change. It is in no way wrong to hate and avoid a group of masochists that profit from the pain of others. Growing up, I was forced to go to a dentist that would tell my parents I needed painful and invasive procedures that I didn’t need, just because my parents could afford to pay too much for them. I had all but about three of my baby teeth pulled by the dentist over a 10 year period, which I’ve since found is completely useless unless the tooth is massively infected. Only one was infected.

He also decided I needed fillings every time I went in for a cleaning. He would drill and fill up to four baby teeth at a time. They were more silver than white by the time they fell or (more likely) were pulled out. I have again since found out that this is useless unless the kid is in pain (which I wasn’t) because they are baby teeth and will fucking fall out (cavity and all) eventually. I also had several adult teeth pulled (I have no canines) and braces put on when I was 10ish because my mouth was “too small” and that “might cause some cosmetic problems.” Or it might not have. They decided my sister needed braces too but my parents had wised up by then and she never got them and she has nicer teeth then me. Oh yeah, funny side story, if you straighten a kid’s teeth before the jaw finishes growing, they’ll just go crooked again when you take the braces off. GOOD IDEA, BRO! My childhood dentist was a total bro. He wore gold chains and never buttoned the top three buttons on his shirt (I wish I made that up).

Ok, so all this leads up to a couple years ago when my mom had one of her batshit crazy moments where she decides that everyone is going to do (x) and the world will suddenly stop being terrible and instead be puppy dogs and rainbows. This time it was that all of us would go to the dentist when we were home for Christmas. My brother got out of it somehow and my dad CLAIMED he had his own dentist that he totes goes to all the time (never confirmed but nice dodge dad) but my sister and I had no escape. Especially once my mom found out I hadn’t been since high school, the last time she thought this would be a great idea.

So my sister and I go and QUELLE SUPRISE! They find something wrong with both of us. I have a small cavity and my sister needs a root canal redone because they fucked it up the first time. The audacity of this was staggering to me. It’s like a mechanic saying, “I stole all your spark plugs so you need to pay me for new spark plugs and to install the spark plugs and also this fee I’ve decided you owe.”

For some stupid reason (probably whatever happy pills she was on that month) my mom agrees to let these butchers have at it again and makes an appointment for us both to come in and have our respective procedures done at the same time a few mornings later. I kept telling her that I’m a grown ass person and can make my own decisions and it doesn’t hurt but NO DICE! I was staying at her house, I didn’t have a flight out for something like a month, and my mom’s special talent is to make one’s life abject misery for no reason at all but especially if she doesn’t get her way. On top of the fact that having these butchers take a crack at her children’s faces (our meal tickets) was stupid, none of us had insurance so it was going to cost her over two grand for the privilege, taking the idea from “stupid” to “fucking terrible beyond all measure.”

The fateful morning comes and, I ain’t gonna lie, I was a wreck. My sister went in first because her procedure was way more involved and I start pacing the waiting room. My mother, compassionate saint that she is, laughs and points.

“You really are crazy aren’t you Toasty?”

“SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! I SHOULD MAKE A RUN FOR IT AND RIDE THE RAILS BACK TO THE WEST COAST!”

“Ok ok. Don’t you have some of those panic pills of yours?”

“TOO SCARED TO TAKE THEM!”

“OMFG! Ok, hold on.”

She walks up to the receptionist and points at me with one of those “get a load for this one” looks and says,

“My offspring seems to be having a freak-out problem. Is there anything you can give her?”

“Well, all we can really do is give her Nitrous during the procedure. It’ll be an extra $80.”

“Let me ask. Toasty, do you want -”

“NUMB MY SUFFERING AND MY MIND SO I NEVER REMEMBER THAT WHICH I AM ABOUT TO ENDURE!”

“Yeah, we’ll take the Nitrous.”

They finally take me back and I see my sister is in the chair next to me, separated by a sheet. Oh man, I totally forgot this part of the story: my sister was sick. She woke up at about 2:00 that morning with a fever. I, of course, proceeded to nurse her efficiently and with utmost compassion as I had always done since her infancy which is to say doted on her insufferably with food and Tylenol and a chorus of, “How are you feeling now?” repeated every 15 minutes.

We told my mom that my sister was sick and really shouldn’t have a root canal today, but she could not have cared less and yelled something about how we don’t appreciate what she does for us and we’re the reason she can’t have nice things and my sister was all, “It’s alright Toasty, LET’S DO THIS!” because she is a fucking badass and one tough cookie.

Back to the dentist’s office. The nurse sits me in the chair and they have one of those TVs on a swing arm and she turns on the Today Show and puts and blanket on me and asks (in a cooing voice) “How’s that, need anything else dear?” and I start to think MAYBE I’m being kind of a baby. She brings in the tank and puts the mask on and turns the tank on. The air smells sweet. I start to feel dizzy.

“How do you feel dear?”

“Weird.”

“Haha, yeah that’s kind of the point.”

“Ok.”

I keep breathing and feel dizzier. Then it feels like I can’t keep my head on my body. Then I start to notice how threatening Al Roker looks. His face is all twisty and distorted and I’m relatively sure he’s reading my thoughts.

“Ok, no, I feel really weird.”

“Like what kind of-”

“LIKE I’M FREAKING THE FUCK OUT MAN!”

“Ok ok, I’ll take the mask off.”

Thankfully, Nitrous starts to wear off as soon as oxygen gets to your brain so I didn’t have to deal with several hours of “I don’t want to feel like this anymore!” like the one time I ate weed…story for another time.

The dentist finally comes in and the nurse and he have a conversation about how I requested Nitrous but I don’t want it anymore and he tells her not to charge us for it (the only cool thing a dentist has ever done) and he takes a look at my tooth.

“The hell you can you fucking shameless torture-monger!” (totally a real word)

“No seriously, just let me start and if it hurts I’ll bring out the big guns.”

“Heroine?”

“…sure whatever, gurl.”

Side story: the dentist I had growing up tried to drill a tooth without Novocaine and I jumped out of the chair, ripped that stupid spit sink out of the floor, and fended him off like an old school lion tamer. No doubt. So needless to say I didn’t believe any of the jive this fool was shoveling.

He starts drilling and then does some other stuff and about 10 minutes later he’s taking his gloves off.

“Wait, that’s it?”

“Yup all done. And you were such a good patient you get a lollipop!” which pretty much cements that I’ve been a total baby about this whole thing.

As I’m walking out, I peek in at my sister who has three people working machinery straight out of Akira over her head, which is burning at a comfortable 102 degrees, and she’s staring at the ceiling with a look of “I can do this time standing on my head” on her adorable monkey face. That’s when I knew, absolutely and without question, that I was a whiny little bitch.

I called my SO back on the West Coast later.

“So how’d the cavity go?”

“They gave me Nitrous.”

“Luuuckeeeeey.”

“I hated it.”

“…you would. Only you would.”

“The universe didn’t make sense, it was not some transcendental experience, and it wasn’t even a fun high. I’m pretty sure the whole west coast is full of shit and also that someone should look into that Al Roker character.”

“Have I told you today how much I love how unique you are? Because I might have some statements I need to recant.”

Today we will not be starting on a positive note (gotta ration out the positivity, since there is so little in the world) and instead I’m gonna dive right in and talk about that stupid Nutrigrain commercial with the mom where the narrator says “you take a meeting” and shows her like talking to her kids “you take a run” and she’s running to catch the school bus “you take it up the butt” …no wait, then she wouldn’t have kids and also this commercial would be less annoying. This commercial is the advertising equivalent to nails on a chalkboard for me. I physically wince whenever I hear it.

There are two main factors that make this commercial maddeningly irritating. First, it does that stupid thing where it analogizes parenthood to business. I hate this shit. Your kitchen table is not a boardroom, your kids are not employees, and your home is not traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s the same as when over-entitled douchebags say that their companies are their “babies” and taxing them is the same as murdering their children. Directly likening facets of the home with facets of business is a lazy metaphor only used by people trying to sell you something you probably don’t need. The commercial is saying, “Being a parent is hard! This is a super secret that we know you live with and we can relate. Only us at Nutrigrain understand how hard you work and that you should be a million bajillionaire for loving your kids so since we’re in this together you should buy our product” even though Nutrigrain is an actual company and really does make a million bajillion dollars (based on SEC filings) and wants to make sure companies keep making the money and families keep spending it.

The second reason this commercial is so deserving of public ridicule and ire is by far the more egregious. This line actually happens,

“Take a nap? L-O-L.”

No, the narrator didn’t laugh out loud, she actually said “LOL.” The first time I heard this I literally could not believe it. I thought maybe it was a joke, like “PSYCHE! That’s not a real commercial. Real people don’t get paid real money for writing commercials that lazy and insulting to the intelligence of it’s audience. Also, Nutrigrain doesn’t really want to destroy the English language. This was all some big joke because Kids in the Hall is coming back to TV or something.” Yes, it was so bad that I had to believe the best of all things, a Kids in the Hall reunion, was actually happening and not the terrible thing that was really happening.

This one line encompasses so much suck, I can barely mock it properly. There’s the obvious, “They actually said L-O-L?! On like television? And it wasn’t an interview with a 15 year old? Fuck the world.” Every time I hear “L-O-L!” spouting out of the TV in that condescending “fuck you for living” voice I want to punch the TV, fully knowing that it’s a TV and not the woman talking. I want to feel glass break under my knuckles and the weight of the plastic body topple behind the force of my fist. In short, it fills me with a desire for destruction. I have to consciously remind myself that at some point the commercial will end and I’ll be really pissed if I don’t have a TV anymore. I need something to watch my Gilmore Girls DVDs on (no commercials FTW!) Side note: I actually suggested to my SO the other day that I should just DVR all the channels at all the times so that I can watch everything without commercials. They seemed to support the idea but I don’t think the technology does. I should just wait for everything to be on DVD and guess at what I’ll like. It’d be better than putting up with these brain-dead marketers who have the intelligence of krill and seem to think everyone else is even stupider./ End side note.

The other thing that pisses me off about this one fucking line is that it capitalizes on that stupid, played out cliche of “OMG being a mom is so hard right?! I mean it’s like totes hard and we never get to sleep which is hilarious HAHAHA! My nipples are chapped and I can’t remember what sex feels like HAHAHA! Am I laughing or crying HAHAHAHA? Laughing? Good.” This has always been a stupid thing that lazy marketers do but it’s so overused that I was hoping they’d find something new to play out. Of course that would take imagination, which no one with the words “marketing” or “media” in their job titles has to even the smallest degree. As someone without kids (and who thanks to modern medicine never will STERILIZATION FTW!) this is just such a weird concept to me. It’s basically saying that having kids is nothing but heartache and sorrow and that your life is about as easy as a shit after eating four dozen eggs but isn’t it great and funny at totally worth it? “I got pregnant and ruined my life AIN’T IT GREAT?!”

It’s like if someone had a really crappy job that they complain about all the time, but it pays pretty well so they think everyone in the world should have the same job. And I don’t know who they’re trying to convince because pretty much everyone does have kids. Are they trying to convince themselves they didn’t make a mistake? Because they did. Unequivocal, intractable mistake. Maybe they’re just trying to make the best out of their mistake? Through laughter?

And yes, I know that I just analogized a job to parenthood but what I did was a brief metaphor that got my point across without being too specific. What this commercial, and others like it, do is just beat a dead horse:

“And and ummmm the infant is like the receptionist because he’s really bad at taking messages and, yeah, and ummmm your spouse is the secretary? No wait, Vice President and ummmm, no now hold on, “metaphor” totally means take all things from the first concept and correspond to something in the second. I learned that in business school.”

Anyway, I grade this commercial so bad I refuse to buy Nutrigrain bars. I wasn’t their most loyal consumer before, admittedly, though I did buy them occasionally (especially for road trips or to placate my sister the monkey) but now every time I even pass them in the grocery store I recoil as to that of something damned; something Godless, and think “YOU! You defile the language I love so much and so must be shunned. Death is too good for you, instead you should be forced outside of society, to live a hard and uncomfortable life and eventually die alone and broken. Sort of like what I hear it’s like to have kids.”